Avi Arad leaves MARVEL!

Hey folks, Harry here... word has come in from all over the place that Avi Arad and Ari Arad have left MARVEL. If true, this would mean the new guy in charge of the whole Marvel film universe would be Kevin Feige. Is this a good turn of events for the Marvel Universe? Honestly, I don't know. Sure, I haven't been very happy with the Fox MARVEL films recently... ELECTRA, FANTASTIC FOUR and X-MEN 3... but they have earned significant money. I've never spoken with Kevin Feige, Moriarty knows him and seems to feel he's very sharp and has a good head for Marvel and its properties... Having said that, Avi Arad has been both a hero and villain in the realm of Marvel and Comic Book cinema. Bringing talented directors like Ang Lee, Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Jon Favreau, Guillermo Del Toro, Steve Norrington to their properties... but at the same time he's brought some less talented directors... rolling the dice on newer talent... that has crapped out on us, but usually with good scripts. However, a lot of those sorts of problems on the worst Marvel films came from Studio interferance and the last conversation I had with Avi - he was very very excited about being able to independently produce Marvel films with a distribution partner in Paramount. Why has he decided to leave? Was he forced out? At Cannes this year they were working on raising the warchest to produce more products, did that go badly? Or is Avi tired of it all and just wants to produce his own films... does his exit from Marvel come tied with some of Marvel's properties to produce? We'll find out soon enough, I called both Avi and Kevin at MARVEL, but have yet to hear back. I'm sure we'll hear soon enough.

Avi just sent me the press release:

MARVEL ANNOUNCES NEW INDEPENDENT PRODUCER DEAL WITH AVI ARAD

- Michael Helfant and Kevin Feige to Lead Marvel Studios as
President/COO and President, Production -

- Arad Will Continue to Produce Spider-Man 3, its Sequels and
Marvel's Own Productions of Hulk and Iron Man -

NEW YORK--May 31, 2006--Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: MVL), a global character-based entertainment and licensing company, today announced that the company has entered into a new arrangement with Avi Arad to independently produce films for Marvel under his own production company banner, Avi Arad Productions. In this new capacity, Mr. Arad will remain actively involved in Marvel's upcoming film slate, including Iron Man and Hulk, the first two films anticipated to be financed and produced by Marvel under its new film financing slate.
Mr. Arad will also remain attached to produce various licensed productions, including the upcoming Spider-Man 3, scheduled for release next year, and subsequent sequels. Consistent with this restructuring, Mr. Arad is resigning from his corporate positions as Chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios, Chief Creative Officer of Marvel and a Marvel director, but will continue to serve as Creative Advisor for Marvel through the remainder of 2006.

Michael Helfant, President and COO of Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige, Marvel Studio's President of Production, will lead Marvel Studios and its continuing development of a growing slate of feature films, television and other entertainment projects. Mr. Helfant, an industry veteran with over 17 years of production experience, was recruited to Marvel last year to manage the expanded scope of studio operations; and Mr. Feige, recently appointed President of Production, has worked side by side with Mr. Arad for the past eight years during Marvel's impressive production run.

"I have helped to build Marvel into a very special company, and on the heels of the tremendous success of X-Men: The Last Stand, I felt like it was the right time for me to move away from the day to day corporate responsibilities in order to focus on what I love best - creating and producing. I am leaving behind a great team to run the studio, and I expect to remain actively involved in the development and production of many Marvel films in the years to come," said Mr.
Arad.

Mort Handel, Marvel's Chairman of the Board, commented, "Avi has been a driving force at Marvel, and he and his team are credited with producing some of the highest grossing films in history, including this past weekend's blockbuster X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man, Hulk, and Fantastic Four. His vision and leadership will be missed, but we understand Avi's desire to pursue a broader array of opportunities and wish him the best of luck. Going forward, we are fortunate to have a deep bench led by Michael Helfant and Kevin Feige who will assume the bulk of Avi's company responsibilities." In addition, Sid Ganis, a Marvel Director, Independent Producer and the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will assist Marvel during the transition.

Michael Helfant, who joined Marvel in November 2005, has over 22 years of entertainment industry experience, most recently as COO of Beacon Pictures, a major independent motion picture production company whose recent feature film releases include Open Range, Raising Helen and Ladder 49. Prior to Beacon, Mr. Helfant was Senior Executive Vice President of Dimension Films (SPY Kids, Scream and Scary Movie franchises, and The Others), a division of Miramax Film Corp. from 1999-2002. Mr. Helfant also served as Executive Vice President, Head of Business Operations and Acquisitions at Interscope Communications, Inc. (Runaway Bride, Pitch Black, Mr. Holland's Opus and Jumanji), and Senior Vice President of Sovereign Pictures, Inc (Reversal of Fortune, My Left Foot, The Commitments and Cinema Paradiso). Mr. Helfant started his career as an entertainment attorney with Loeb & Loeb in Century City. Mr. Helfant is a graduate of the JD/MBA program at UCLA.

Kevin Feige has over ten years of entertainment experience, including eight years developing feature films and entertainment based on Marvel characters. He joined Marvel Studios in 2000 as Executive Vice President and was recently promoted to President, Production. He has been actively involved in Marvel's feature film projects, serving as Executive Producer on X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 2, The Hulk, The Punisher and Fantastic Four; Co-Producer on X-Men: United and Daredevil and as a production executive on Spider-Man. Prior to joining Marvel Studios, Mr. Feige worked for Producer Lauren Shuler Donner and Director Richard Donner at The Donners' Company. While there, he worked on films including Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones and the hit romantic comedy You've Got Mail, directed by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. He then transitioned into development which led to an Associate Producer role on the film that revamped the comic book genre, X-Men. It was there that he started his work in the Marvel Universe, developing the X-Men feature for two years with Lauren and Director Bryan Singer, and serving as the film's Associate Producer. Mr. Feige graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television.

I think Arad got tired of the bs. Sure some of the movies have made money, Elektra bombed, FF made it&#39;s money back and X3 is a hit. Wow that&#39;s actually not that great of a recent track record. Only the Spider-man movies have hit home runs so this isn&#39;t surprising. All these movies should be Spider-man esque but they fail and someone had to take the fall.

Did Harry even read the press release? Arad is stepping down as head of Marvel studios so that he can produce all the upcoming Marvel movies as an independent, making him more money and giving him the ability to add outside projects like the Bratz movie to his plate. So he&#39;s "leaving" Marvel but he&#39;s not really leaving at all.

I don&#39;t know why this site is sooo busy blowing Superman and Snakes on a Muthafucking Plane. "Transformers" and "They call me Bruce" will crush them both.... and they call themselves "geeks". psht! whatever.

More than likely he&#39;ll have a hand in stuff from time to time, but don&#39;t start jumping the gun thinking that as soon as he leaves things will get better movie wise for these characters. There are plenty of producers on these flicks that can cause just as much damage.

Guillermo del Toro did Blade 2. Also the May Parker and Carnage thing is probably a mistake. On the imdb page of Silent Hill it&#39;s also said before that Pyramid Head was played by Deborah Kara Unger. But has since then been corrected. So it&#39;s probably just a typo or something.

1) Seems like there will be more Spider Man movies after #3. 2) Avi probably realized what an abomination X3 was and his consciousness made him realize it was time to switch things up. 3) I&#39;m real interested to see how Hulk 2, Ironman, and of the course the next Spider Man(s) turn out. 4) Congrats Harry on the engagement? If true, props to you man.

he&#39;s going....but he&#39;s not going. He&#39;s not going to be head of Marvel Productions, but he&#39;s going to produce movies based on Marvel characters as an independent ? This smacks of BFD (Big Fuckin&#39; Deal) Harry - did you actually READ the press release ??

...this all wrong. Avi leaves to form his own production company and times the announcement for just after the staggeringly good weekend box from his latest flick comes in? I&#39;m guessing he used that as a bargaining chip to let him keep his fingers in the pot and making money off Marvel while still taking on non-Marvel projects and making even more money. Essentially, it&#39;s like he bought his live-in girlfriend a giant diamond and fucked her into three orgasms, then picked the next moment to reveal that he needs his space and wants to see other people. Oh...and he&#39;d still like to keep a key to the place and drop by to fuck her every now and again. It looks as though Marvel pretty much bent over and said "yes, please" to that proposition. I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s going to end up in better movies for Marvel or not, but this is hardly a case of Arad getting forced out or taking the fall for a record-breaking summer blockbuster opening...that much I can promise you.

The studios are the ones who hire the writers and directors...Marvel and their henchmen have little say. The Marvel produced films will be another story, but there&#39;s no way to tell whether this is a good or bad development for that. Nearly all the Marvel character films have really sucked, so I don&#39;t see why anyone would mourn the loss of anyone even partly responsble for them. But again, Arad probably deserves little of the credit or the blame, so no big deal that he is leaving.

And he&#39;s a pissy, little bitch. As for the Arad thing? Good. For someone who claimed to have such a profound understanding of Marvel&#39;s properties, he sure didn&#39;t have much of a problem handing them off to people who would royally fuck them up.
As for not knowing Rothman if I saw him?
http://www.tom-rothman.com/tom_rothman.jpg
Who could forget that fucking mug?

and that adults with half a brain or more can enjoy. movies without action figures involved or based on cartoons and drawings of musclemen with magic powers. you know, movies that won&#39;t be forgotten a year after they&#39;re released on DVD. i mean how rewarding is overseeing The Punisher or Blade II in the grand scheme of things?

Unless it was Chris Claremont taking his place, I don&#39;t think anything has changed here. Having Marvel "take back" their properties means nothing either. It just means one less entity needs to be involved to greenlight a pile of shit. Marvel is just as good at fucking up their own properties as any movie studio. Actually Marvel is way more proficient at ruining their own properties. They don&#39;t care about quality on any level, they just care about return on investment. When they are involved in good projects, it is by accident.

Avi&#39;s closest friend is the owner. This guy gets very, very bored with businesses and loves to turn them when they are at a peak. The longest he&#39;s ever held onto a company is this Marvel term. I think this means Marvel is about to be sold to Viacom.

Avi Arad held court over some amazing forward movement for the Marvel Universe. The guy did right by most of the characters that he represented in getting onto the big screen. I wish him the best in the future and I

I&#39;ll admit, if it wasn&#39;t for Avi Arad then maybe we wouldn&#39;t have had half the movies come out but then he had to have his input on certain movies. The movie he did have input were not that good quality wise and only one mad money and that was FF and X3. The others: Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider(well that jury is still out, just don&#39;t have faith in the director). The Marvel movies that were successful and good quality he really didn&#39;t have that much input in such as the first 2 X-men movies plus the Spiderman franchises. I just hope he doesn&#39;t mess with the rest of the Marvel movies.

the guy got the superhero buzz rolling again with Blade and New Line. Now all comic movies are cool and not just cheezy kids fest with PG ratings. All in all...I think Avi deserves a godspeed for what he has done for geekdom.

time I&#39;ve posted in a stretched out talkback. And Amen to poopflinger, Jon Favreau is more of a hack than Ratner. Oh wait, ELF was a masterpiece? Iron Man isn&#39;t made yet so let&#39;s not crown Favreau just yet.
Laus Deo

Avi said he "cared" about Marvel and its characters.....and yet , gave us the worst screen villian in recent history in Dr Doom. I cant forgive his ass for that. Thanks for nothing Avi. Now maybe someone will get in there, that will not allow film makers and idiot writers to mess with these classic characters. They do not need updated or fixed in any way dumbasses.

Arad gets to keep his fingers in projects he was already involved in, but he won&#39;t have anything to do with other projects or new development. If I read that right I didn&#39;t see any mention of Fantastic Four 2 or the animated series, so if those aren&#39;t too far along the new guy may be able to keep them from going too far off track.

When arad came to Marvel they were bankrupt fiancially and they were in no position to distribute anything and they had no studio clout whatsoever, arad brought to marvel his merchandising experience, he taught marvel that in order to make some profit they would have to link in to things like toys t-shirts, etc. once that happend, once marvel were financially secure, he than began plan b. he went to several studios and locked them into plans to bring, hulk, daredevil etc to life. he dragged marvel back from from the brink of bankruptcy and turned them into a corporation. In order to make the company last, he pulled off one of the biggest corporate deals in a windfall from Merril lynch, which they say was somewhere in the 500 billion. Marvel then became a corporation, that is what they are today. He leaves the company much better off, then when he started as ceo, which was insolvent and nearly bankrupt. In a company brand, marketing and merchandise, is what it is all about these days, i have a diploma in business managment and admin. Movies are product, good or bad, movies like x-men 3 are part of a franchise. X-men 3 succeded because people knew the character and like them. and like the actors(or in berrys case not) too. it all comes down to marketing, story comes second. etc.

He did a great job at the beginning with X1 and Spiderman. He respected the comic books and developed the characters but also understood that cinema was a different language. After The Hulk failed with it&#39;s too serious approach he went the opposite direction and went with quick studio dreck. He should have apologized for Fan4. Were they even trying with that one?

Avi will be around. He will have his fingers in so many production pies, maximizing his profit margin, he won&#39;t know which property to assrape next. Marvel would be as foolish as a white suburban kid trying to by crack in South Central to not work with Avi in the future.

hey, the president of pfizer just sent me a press release too!
I like this site but I can&#39;t believe you had the balls to say "Avi sent me this"... it&#39;s a fucking press release. If he&#39;s even met the person that sent that I&#39;ll eat my keyboard. Just admit he hasn&#39;t returned your calls and be done with it.